I need to object, and that is that, Senator, you insist on separating therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cells. However, in my own case, I requir… - Christopher Reeve

The budget of the National Institute of Health in 1998 was 12 billion dollars. However, due to Congress and also got pressure applied by a number of disease groups, the budget for fiscal 2003 will be 27.2 billion dollars. And human ... HHS Secretary Thompson has said there is plenty of money available for the kind of research. Doubling the budget of the NIH and more within five years has been an extraordinary accomplishment. So to say that there isn't ... I mean, more money would be nice, but to say there's not enough money to do research into therapeutic cloning is a false statement.

[N]ever in the history of science have we been given such a gift of being able to use cells that can become any tissue or cell type in the body for the purpose of healing. I think that if you do not have the combination of therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cells, you are going to be condemning a lot of people to unnecessary and death. If I look around at what else is going on, for years just in the spinal cord community, there has been research on growth factors and Schwann cells, and there have been efforts to stop protein inhibitor, but they have not yet shown the same promise that the embryonic stem cells do, and at the moment, in two places, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of California at Irvine, researchers have been conducting very successful experiments using human embryonic stem cells in animal models in both the acute and chronic phases and getting recovery. Of course, they are going to have to move to the higher animal forms before humans, but the promise is absolutely extraordinary, and I cannot think of any other kind of therapy that would be as effective and as promising as this is. And when I read articles or hear people say that the promise of human embryonic stem cells is dubious, I am very disturbed, because the only reason they get to say that is because the NIH has not been allowed to spend a single dollar on embryonic stem cell research. They have a budget now of $25 billion, and yet, because of lack of guidelines and because of the restrictions that have been imposed on the NIH so far, not one human embryonic stem cell project has been federally funded. That is why you are seeing such slow progress. And if we continue that way, I am going to be in this wheelchair for a long time that I do not need to be, and others like me.

Sitting in a chair for more than 4 years now has given me plenty of time to think about many of the distorted and irrational values in our society. For example, all the researchers now agree that the damaged spinal cord can and will be repaired. But, they caution, recovery will only benefit the fittest. This means that the patient must exercise diligently to prevent muscle atrophy, and the loss of bone density and cardiovascular capacity. Special equipment ranging from electrodes that stimulate muscle groups, tilt tables that allow people to stand and bear weight, exercise bicycles, and treadmill therapy, which enables even a quadriplegic to walk while suspended in a harness, are all available. When the cure comes and signals from the brain once again reach the body, individuals who have kept in shape will be able to be rehabilitated relatively quickly and will no longer need payments from their insurance company. But no company will pay for this proactive therapy which would save them hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run. So most spinal cord injury victims simply deteriorate while they continue to fight for basic quality of life coverage. Meanwhile, the CEOs of many insurance companies are making salaries in the neighborhood of 300 million dollars a year. How much profit is reasonable and justifiable? The same distortion of values is evident in entertainment, sports, and politics. Why do studios pay some of their biggest stars 20 million dollars a picture? Does even the most gifted athlete deserve 91 million dollars over 7 years to swing a bat and catch a baseball? Why is it that so many of our elected officials end up in office primarily because they have been able to outspend their opponents? At the other end of the spectrum, why has the NIH since its inception in 1940 had to plead incessantly for enough money to battle every disease in the encyclopedia?